Poet Craig Santos Perez to Give Annual Shannon-Clark Lecture The lecture, which is free and open to the public to view via Zoom, is titled “Climate Change and Pacific Islander Eco-Poetics.”

By Erica Turman
September 29, 2020

Craig Santos Perez, an Indigenous Chamoru poet from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam) and an English professor at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa, will deliver Washington and Lee’s annual Shannon-Clark Lecture in English virtually on Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m.

 

The event, which is open to the public to view via Zoom, is titled “Climate Change and Pacific Islander Eco-Poetics.” Registration for the event is free and can be completed online at go.wlu.edu/perez.

 

In addition to his poetry, Perez is also a scholar, editor, publisher, essayist, critic, book reviewer, artist, environmentalist and political activist.

 

In Hawaii, he teaches creative writing, eco-poetry and Pacific literature. He is an affiliate faculty member with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies and the Indigenous Politics Program. Perez is also a faculty member for Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Kundiman Writers Retreat and Mokulē’ia Writers Retreat.

 

“Craig Santos Perez brings enormous energy and activism to literary and environmental studies,” said Deborah Miranda, Thomas H. Broadus Jr. Professor of English at W&L. “As both scholar and poet, his work focuses on Indigenous Pacific Island communities impacted by colonization, militarization and tourism, and the resulting environmental and cultural damages that – until his interventions – have been invisible to the rest of the world. I look forward to introducing his work to my poetry workshop, as well as the larger W&L community.”

 

Perez earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Redlands in 2002. He earned his master’s degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco, as well as a master’s degree and a doctorate in comparative ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

The Shannon-Clark Lectures in English, established by a gift from a Washington and Lee alumnus who wishes to remain anonymous, honor the memories of Edgar Finley Shannon, chairman of Washington and Lee’s Department of English from 1914 until he died in 1938, and Harriet Mabel Fishburn Clark, a grandmother of the donor and a woman vitally interested in liberal arts education.